Lessons in Motherhood

"D means Diploma", "Be Hot", and Other Invaluable Lessons My Mother Taught Me

Below is an excerpt from a letter I wrote to my mother this year. It is, primarily, a list of lessons about parenting that I learned from my fabulous, one-of-a-kind, larger than life mom. She read it at brunch, ugly cried into her Spritz and said, “this is why it’s important to wear sunglasses.” Thankfully, that had already made the list.

Happy Mother’s Day.

Proof that only one of us can rock a Pixie cut.

I’ve been thinking a lot about motherhood. About the kind of mom I eventually want to become. Naturally, it’s got me reflecting on the way I was raised, which is what ultimately inspired me to write this letter. Your style of parenting was not always…orthodox – after all, you celebrated my creativity when I ruined your white carpet with black Sharpie – but it resulted in two kids who are fiercely obsessed with you and a son-in-law who doesn’t mind being your personal Uber driver. As far as motherhood goes, that is an unmitigated success. The Pulitzer Prize. You did so much right, and as I consider stepping into this next chapter of my own life – the most meaningful chapter I will ever write – I am trying to decode your secrets. To distill your brilliance as a parent into concrete, actionable lessons. With that in mind, we [the kids] sat down together and came up with a list of our favorite pearls of wisdom that you taught us about parenthood. It was tough to pick and choose, but here are some of our favorites:

1. Be hot. You can either be a hot mom or a not-hot mom. There is only one acceptable option. Get your hair done, put on your biggest glasses and go turn heads in the carpool lane.

2. Invest in pieces that will wow the grandkids. No one will ever look at their grandmother’s closet and marvel, “Wow, grandma dressed so efficiently!” But they will turn to you and say, “Wait, is that a real Hermés scarf?!”

3. Pick up your kids. When they’re crying in their crib. When they’re getting off from school. From the sleepover, from the airport, from their first heartbreak. When your kids need you, pick them up in your arms, or in your car, or even over a martini and say: tell me everything.

4. Don’t trust the books. There will always be a book-du-jour or celebrity specialist with the latest trend. There will be friends who have a lot to say, and even strangers who take it upon themselves to give advice. Take what feels right. Leave what does not. No one understands the alchemy of mother and child more than a mother and her child. Trust your instincts as a parent – they’ll be your north star.

5. Dig deep. The older we get, the more we marvel at your inner fortitude. Your unassuming, unmatched resilience. When life gets hard, you not only preach strength – you model it. You’ve shown us what it looks like to be wounded, to heal, to move on unburdened. Sometimes, the only answer is to reach inward, find the depth of our power and insist on being okay. We all have ghosts. That doesn’t mean they have to haunt us. After all, it’s all in the recovery.

6. Let them jump in the ocean with their clothes on. It’ll get the car dirty. You’ll be picking sand out of their hair and pockets for weeks. But there’s a brief, finite period where they get to be this untroubled, this carefree. Where they won’t fear the judgement of their peers, or realize that the drive home will be too sticky and itchy. Let them be innocent, for as long as it’s possible.

7. Remember your youth. One of your super-powers as a parent was your ability to remember exactly what being young was like. Perhaps it’s because you never age. But through the callouses of adulthood, you always remembered the tenderness of childhood – the fear of finding someone to sit with at lunch. How important the right outfit at free-dress was. The thrill of being away at camp. You remembered it all, and never made our fears or angst or joy feel trite or childish. It bridged the divide between parents and child, and while you always were undoubtedly our mother, it also made you our greatest confidant.

8. Sometimes, it’s your kid’s fault. You loved us unconditionally. You thought the sun and moon and stars revolved around us. You also knew when we were fucking up. You were not afraid to ask, “what did you do?” and force us to reflect honestly on our flaws and mistakes…And of course, there were plenty of flaws and mistakes. With that in mind:

9. Love your children for exactly who they are. You love Odessa’s fire. You love my…quirks. You love the qualities in us that are not necessarily our most endearing. You see us for exactly who we are, and adore us anyway. That’s the kind of unconditional love that pins a child’s shoulders back – that makes them feel profoundly understood and known.

10. “Talks too much in class” is not a bad thing. If our kids are talking in class, it means they’re learning to interact with people, to make friends, to develop community. That is the foundation for the rest of their lives, and it is every bit as valuable as whatever Google-able fact the second-grade teacher is reciting. On that note:

11. D Means Diploma. Hilarious, obviously. But also, if examined, profoundly wise. It is not about the actual grade your child is receiving. It’s about letting them know, their personal best is enough. Our love will never be conditioned on achievement. We will love them equally if they get the D or A, just as long as they gave it their all. Giving us that space to fail – that total and complete support – is part of the reason we flourished in the areas we did. We weren’t choked under the pressure of compact soil…in this (one) way, you gave us space to bloom.

12. Educate them. Yes, D means diploma, but equally important: knowledge is power. You should have no doubt that this principle will be integral to our parenting style…we literally purchased George dog toys that would improve his problem-solving skills. But while you constantly undercut your own education, you insisted on fostering ours. Whether our kid is a weirdo genius (fingers crossed!) or a prodigal golfer who skips college to be a pro athlete (long shot) or a totally average kid who needs a nose job, we will prioritize their education with the ferocity that you prioritized ours.

13. “Toga.” When the chips are down, when all seems lost, when nothing around you makes any sense…often times, the best thing you can do is throw your hands up and say, “fuck it, the house burned down. Pull out the yacht! We’re going to France.”

14. It’s okay to be hungry. No, not in that way, don’t be an almond mom. What we mean is: it’s okay to have big dreams. To yearn for something remarkable, and to accept the discomfort that comes with the pursuit of it. Sometimes, short term pain really is long term gain, and keeping our eyes on the prize is paramount.

15. Bing bing bing. This one needs no explanation. Sometimes, you just got to Bing it out.

16. Everything’s better in the morning. At some point, our child will look at us with bleary eyes and a blotchy red face, convinced that the world is ending. It is not ending. They need to sleep. However bad it feels at ten-oh-clock at night, it will look much brighter at eight-oh-clock-AM.

17. If you have your health, you have everything. All these lessons are fine and good. We will do our best to implement them. But eventually, we will have teenagers rolling their eyes at us, and bills that are scaring the shit out of us, and problems that we’re not sure how to solve. We’re going to fall short. There will be times it all feels insurmountable and overwhelming, and in those moments, we must get back to this most basic truth: if we have our health, we can conquer anything.

18. Laughter is the best fucking medicine. In those times are hardship and in times of unimaginable prosperity, always, always, always laugh. At the situation. At ourselves. At farts. Mostly farts.

19. Show up. Of all the ways that you were a superb mother, this one has to be the greatest. It’s hard to encapsulate all the ways you showed up for us…every phone call; every soccer game and play practice. Every peak and valley you have lived alongside us. The tears you’ve cried for the parts we didn’t get; the screams of joy when conquered our fears and went down the big slide. All the scrapes you disinfected, the dreams you nurtured, the fears you listened to, the dance parties you threw. All those precious, ephemeral moments in the sandbox, pushing sand into mounds and carving windows into the delicate grains.

Mama - one day, I will enter that sandbox, and in so many ways, I am terrified. I don’t know if I’ll be enough. If I’ll be able to give them enough. If I’ll make them feel less-than despite my best efforts, or embarrass them by reciting too many fun-facts at the sleepover. I don’t know who they’ll be, or who I’ll be, or if I’ll ever measure up to you. What I do know, in spite of that fear, is this: I have spent a lifetime watching you build castles in the sand. At my wedding, you told me it was time to build my own.

Of all the architects I could have learned from, it’s been the privilege of my life to study under you.